


So Much Thin Glass

by walkingsaladshooter



Category: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: (A few kinds of tension tbh), Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Animal death (not a pet and the death itself is not shown), F/M, Gothic, Mentions of past abuse, References to Canonical Character Death, Secrets, Suspense, Tension, mentions of past violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-01
Updated: 2019-10-01
Packaged: 2020-10-12 22:03:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 14,629
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20571641
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/walkingsaladshooter/pseuds/walkingsaladshooter
Summary: You can let the past die, but that doesn't mean it will go quietly.





	So Much Thin Glass

**Author's Note:**

> When Rey travels to the isolated Organa house to repair its generations-old windows, she was not told the owner would be there. She was also not told there would be strange sounds in the house. She certainly was not told about the one door that cannot be unlocked.
> 
> An homage to a few of my favorite pieces of Gothic fiction.
> 
> Title from Theodore Roethke's "Big Wind." Moodboard by crossingwinter. Infinite thanks to crossingwinter and shelikespretties for the beta/edits, and to all the RFFA mods. <3
> 
> (This fic contains mentions of past abuse and violence in T-rated detail. There is an incident of animal death - it's a wild animal, not a pet, and the death itself is not shown/described.)
> 
>   


It’s a shame, Rey thinks, to arrive at the Organa house after dark. Its greatest draw, and her entire purpose in traveling there, is far better appreciated in the daylight. But the way was longer than she had anticipated, especially in this pouring rain, on these barely-maintained back country roads, and so it’s already well after dark.

The wheels of her practical little car manage to find traction on the slippery gravel and mud. Along the sides of the road, briefly flashing in the pale headlights, are endless stretches of barren fields. Something must have grown here, once—wheat or soy or the ever-present corn—but now it’s all low scrub, desolate and undefined.

This far out, there aren’t many houses. Rey can’t remember how long it’s been since she saw one. All she’s passed in at least five miles now is a tiny country church, dark but for a single lamp above the door, looking every bit as desolate and run-down as the fields surrounding it.

She would feel more vulnerable, so alone this far out, if she hadn’t learned to take care of herself—and take care of herself well—quite a long time ago.

The Organa house—wherever it is, in all this rain—is usually empty until closer to the holidays. This is what Ms. Holdo promised her when she called Rey with the job offer. It’s been passed down through the Organa family for ages, but its current owner lives on the opposite coast right now and won’t be moving in until the end of the year. Plenty of time for Rey to complete her work before then.

“It’s in good condition,” Ms. Holdo had said over the phone. “Strong structure, sturdy floors and stairs. It’s only the cosmetics that need work.”

“Like the windows,” said Rey.

“Like the windows.”

Now, driving in the dark, Rey’s knuckles whiten as she grips the steering wheel. She’s been going slowly, being safe, but there’s still a steady, low rush of adrenaline keeping her focused, sitting up straight, vision centered and wary.

By the time she finally finds the drive, marked at the end with a painted wooden sign bearing the name Organa in black script, she’s exhausted.

She takes her car up the drive—which is far better paved than the road—between the lines of bushes. Scraggly branches, no longer well-pruned, reach toward her windows in the dark.

When the drive finally brings her to the house itself, the bushes open out into a wide courtyard of paved stones. They bump under her tires, and she drives around a squared-off garden, which she can barely see in the rain, to the side drive.

“The garages are behind the house,” Ms. Holdo had told her, “to preserve the facade. Use the side drive on the left side.”

The garages are old-fashioned, with doors that unlock with a key and open by hand. Rummaging in her bag, Rey finds the ring of Organa house keys Ms. Holdo’s aide had delivered to her yesterday. They have different-colored key covers on them with tiny hand-written labels. She finds the garage key, grimaces, and steps out into the rain.

Her feet stay dry in her reliable boots, and the hood of her jacket keeps her head from getting soaked, but the rest of her is drenched by the time she unlocks the door, hauls it up, and scurries back into her car. Swearing under her breath, Rey drives into the garage, parks, and finally turns off the ignition.

Her limbs are tired, the adrenaline of the drive draining out and the cold rain soaking in, as she hauls her duffel out of the passenger seat. Her equipment will wait until morning.

With the garage closed and locked behind her—she can’t imagine who would steal her car, all the way out here, but she takes no chances with what little is hers—she picks her way through the puddles. In the darkness and driving rain, she can’t really see the yard behind the house. There are tall, dark shapes that are probably trees, but Rey is hurrying too quickly to make them out.

The key turns easily in the back door, and Rey stumbles inside.

A wet, searching hand finds the light switch. Warm yellow lamps light up along the ceiling, making Rey blink. It’s a mudroom, not too large. Coat hooks line the wall above a bench with baskets underneath; on the other side are two sets of double doors, old dark-stained well-polished wood.

Above the coat hooks are three small windows, cut with colored shapes that Rey longs to see glow with daylight.

But it’s late, now. So she wriggles out of her jacket, unlaces her boots, and leaves them to dry, carrying her duffel further into the house.

The mudroom gives way to an enormous kitchen with an old brick fireplace on one wall, the huge, wide kind you can cook on. The other wall features a high-end stove and refrigerator, but the fireplace and the exposed wooden beams of the ceiling are old. The window above the sink has a pane at the top done in a design of doves and roses, white and green and pink; that’s old, too, she knows.

Adjacent to the kitchen are a pantry, a half-bath, and a smallish, empty room that even her breathing echoes in. Then the hall leads her to a dining room, a living room, another living room. Maybe one of them is a sitting room. She doesn’t know how rich-person nomenclature works.

All of the furniture is heavy and old. There’s little in the way of decor; old Persian rugs lie across the floorboards, and there are a few floor lamps, but not much else. None of the windows have curtains. Probably to show them off. Every single room has at least one stained glass window, just like Ms. Holdo promised.

In the middle of the front of the house, behind the huge front doors and what she supposes is an entryway, is the staircase. It’s solid, with dark-stained wooden steps and banister and white-painted newels.

Rey turns off the lights and climbs it.

Lightning flashes outside, sending the colors of the window across the landing. It’s the most detailed window she’s seen so far, the only one that has a picture: a stag and a dove, intertwined among a sea of trees and roses.

The thunder makes it rattle in its frame.

Something creaks downstairs. Rey feels a prickle run up her neck.

She knows the house is old. She knows she’s the first one to walk its boards in at least a month, and she knows the warmth of the day has given way to the chill of the night with the storm, so of course the wood is creaking.

Still, she hurries the rest of the way up the stairs in the dark.

At the top of the stairs is a single long hallway running lengthwise through the house, with rooms at the front and the back. She has no energy or desire to explore more tonight.

“Left, last door.” Her voice sounds too loud in the empty space. But it helps her remember Ms. Holdo’s instructions.

Thunder rumbles again as she walks down the hall. Her hand trails the smooth-plastered wall, searching for a lightswitch, but she must have missed it, and so she walks the whole way in the dark. There’s more creaking, the sound of windows throughout the house rattling in the wind, and the driving of rain on the roof above her. She quickens her steps.

But it’s there. The last door on the left-hand wing of the house opens silently to a nicely-sized bedroom. It’s done up humbly, but comfortably, with a full-size bed with fluffy white linens, end tables and a dresser, a small desk and chair. Two doors flank the bed. One leads to a closet, where Rey dumps her duffel unceremoniously. The other leads to the small attached bathroom. There’s no shower in here, and it’s barely bigger than the closet, but at least she can brush her teeth in the comfort of her own space.

She changes into the oversized t-shirt she sleeps in, ties up her hair and washes her face, gets herself ready for sleep. Her nerves feel frayed—from the tension of driving through rain and wind and darkness, the late hour, the sounds of the huge, empty house shivering in the night.

Before she climbs into bed, she pauses. Digging back in the pocket of her jeans where she dropped them on the floor, she pulls out the ring of house keys. She closes and locks the door to her room, feeling silly, but also feeling safer. Only then does she go to bed and let herself sleep.

  
  


——

  
  


The Organa house is a jewel in the morning light. Rey wanders from room to room, examining the stained glass set in each. Some only have small transom windows in simple geometric designs, but some, like the kitchen and especially the staircase, are gloriously lovely.

The colors of the glass are rich and vibrant, the leading in gorgeous condition. It’s mainly the settings of them that she’ll need to repair—where the glass is set into the window-frames, most of the windows are sitting too loosely. The edge pieces are often cracked from this, but at least she won’t have to dismantle entire designs to repair them.

There are dozens of them throughout the house, so it’ll take her a couple weeks at least. But it should be good work.

Before she starts, Rey makes herself a peanut butter sandwich for breakfast (she brought basic, meager groceries with her, but she’ll need to drive into town eventually to stock up a bit better if she doesn’t want peanut butter and oatmeal for every meal—not that she’s a stranger to that) and a cup of coffee, and she goes out on the front porch.

The house looks friendlier in the daylight. The square garden at the center of the courtyard in front of the house is rioting with flowers and greenery—bugbane, some flowers Rey doesn’t know that look like orange and yellow and red flames, chrysanthemums, and then a host of bushes with no flowers at this time of the year, but plenty of leaves, glossy or feathery or spiked. They’re not well-pruned; the flowers have bolted too tall, the leaves spill over the brick border and across the paving stones of the drive.

Past the hedges, though, the fields still look bleak, even lonelier somehow in the morning light. Rey can’t hear any birds.

She’s sitting on the steps of the ridiculously enormous porch, drinking her coffee, when a man appears from the hedges of the driveway, walking up towards the house.

Rey doesn’t move. He’s a tall, thin man, pale and ginger-haired, in a black coat and a blue shirt buttoned up to the throat, and she feels confident in her ability to gouge his eyes and run for it if he tries anything.

But he doesn’t. His gait is measured, and he carries a basket in one hand. He stops a respectable distance away, near the garden, and calls over, “Good morning, miss.”

Rey nods. “Morning.”

“I’m Pastor Hux from the church down the way. I heard you’d be staying here for a bit.” He smiles. It’s a tight smile, like he’s not used to it. He must be a more serious sort of preacher. “It seems only right that I give you a proper welcome to the neighborhood.” He holds up the basket, pulling back a dish cloth to reveal a small pile of muffins.

Rey arches one eyebrow. “Not much of a neighborhood.”

The preacher inclines his head to one side slightly. “No, I suppose not. Most folks have migrated to the city by now. But those of us who remain stay closely knit.” He steps in closer, holding out the basket. Rey hesitates long enough to sip her coffee, then reaches out and takes it.

“You’re welcome to Sunday worship any time,” says Hux.

“Thank you,” says Rey. She has no intention of going, but the offer is kind.

He nods. “I’ll leave you to your work.” His gaze lifts, trailing over the facade of the house. “This is a beautiful old structure. It’s good to see it getting some attention.” And he turns and begins his way back to the drive, his hands clasped behind his back.

Rey watches him, then cuts her gaze to the muffins. They smell good. Generally, as a rule, she doesn’t trust strangers, but a preacher is less likely to mean her harm than most. And poisoning a complete stranger through muffins would be exceptionally odd. She picks one up and takes a bite. Blueberries. Sugar crystallized on top. No taste of the bitter almond notes of cyanide, at least, which is something.

“Pardon me.”

She looks up. Hux has turned back to her from the other side of the garden. “I don’t mean to seem forward. But the thought of a young woman like yourself staying all alone in this old house, so far out in the middle of nowhere, doesn’t sit well with me. You could come stay at the church, if you like. You’d be quite safe, and it’s not far from here.” He smiles. “Not to be a prudish preacher, but I would rest easier knowing you were safe. You never know who’ll come rambling across a country house like this.”

Rey wants another bite of the muffin. It’s delicious. But she has to wait long enough to tell him, “No thank you. I’m used to taking care of myself.” Then she eats, chews, and the preacher stares back at her with an expression that’s hard to read. “But that’s kind of you,” she adds, once she’s swallowed her mouthful. “I appreciate it.”

His face clears, and he smiles his tight smile again. “Know that the offer stands, if you change your mind.”

“I’ll remember that. Thanks, Pastor.”

This time, he actually leaves.

  
  


——

  
  


Rey brings in her tools and equipment, and she sets up shop in the dining room. The table makes a good workbench, though she takes care to cover it with both a tarp and a canvas drop cloth to make sure she doesn’t damage the old wood.

One by one, she moves through the rooms. She strips the splintering frames from the stained-glass windows, carefully lifting out the glass, then taping plastic over the holes left behind. Each window is brought down to her workspace, where she checks the edges, sands them, applies copper taping and carefully solders her work in place.

During the days, she works cheerfully. Her phone doesn’t get reception out here (there’s a landline for emergencies, or for calling Ms. Holdo with questions), but her trusty, cheapass mp3 player connected to cheapass little speakers keeps happy, if tinny, music pumping while she works. She sings along and grins with every window that goes back into place whole and beautiful.

In the afternoons, before the sun goes down, she takes walks around the house or down the long dirt-and-gravel country road. She never goes quite so far as the church, but once she passes Pastor Hux cutting across the field toward the road.

“Walking,” he says, hands behind his back as he nods to Rey before carrying on, “is an excellent opportunity to contemplate the splendor of God’s creation.”

It’s a fantastically old-fashioned way to phrase things, but somehow it fits in the barren landscape. The fields are overgrown and empty, and walking them makes her feel extraordinarily lonely, but the fresh air makes her feel better. Clearer. Stronger to face the night.

Because for all the days are pleasant enough, if lonesome, the sounds the house makes at night never sit well with Rey. She dislikes how none of the regular, un-stained windows have curtains. Their gaping, dark squares in the nighttime feel like yawning portals, and part of her feels on edge about what could climb in through them, even with the panes shut tightly and locked.

It doesn’t help that, after the first warm, sunny morning, the weather falls into a more reliably autumnal pattern. The days stay chillier, and the sun, even when it’s out, feels pale. And the nights grow windier, which only adds to the strange sounds.

Rey is good at making the most of things. Her music, the pale sunshine, the sunny-side-up eggs on toast she makes herself for dinner—they’re good things. But even so, once the sun goes down, she doesn’t linger out in the open of the creaking, empty old house. She locks herself in her room, sleeps early, and wakes with the sun.

Ms. Holdo had specifically told her that every single room in the house had at least one stained-glass window, and that nearly all were in need of repair. As the days pass in her first week, Rey mostly works on the windows in the first story of the house. But on the sixth day, she decides to inventory the second story rooms.

Upstairs seems to be mostly a series of bedrooms—furnished, as with the rest of the house, with sparing, basic pieces or clearly antique items. There are two full bathrooms, one completely empty room that could be anything, and what seems to be a library with bare shelves and a window-seat under a round window. It’s the only round one in the house, set with a rose in the center and rays of yellow and orange around it like the sun; Rey longs to curl up there, but she is ever aware that this is not her house, nor is it an abandoned house. the owner will move in soon and so she should not let herself love it. 

Every room is either unlocked or easily opened by a key on the ring Rey received, except one.

The center room of the rooms along the front of the house is locked, and Rey cannot find a key that fits it. She sits on the floor, trying every single one, growing more tense with each attempt until her fingers nearly shake.

“Frustration,” she mutters. Normally she doesn’t talk to herself much, but being all alone in this huge house for nearly a week is entirely too quiet; she talks to herself a few times a day, just to hear a human voice. “That’s why I’m wound up.”

It’s a colder sort of feeling, though, than frustration usually is.

Eventually Rey drops the ring of keys, furrows her brow, and reaches up to pull a bobby pin out of her hair where it’s twisted up in a tiny knot on top of her head.

“Been a minute,” she mutters. “But the fingers don’t forget, I think.” And she begins trying to pick the lock.

It isn’t easy going. Time was Rey could pick a lock in five seconds flat, but it’s been some years since she needed that particular skill. Furthermore, she’s used to picking modern locks. All the doors in the Organa house still have antique knobs and keyholes.

“This should be easier to pick.” Rey huffs, adjusts her posture, tries again. Still nothing. “You stubborn little bastard.” She’s been crouching for nearly five minutes, fighting the lock. Likely she could call Ms. Holdo and have a key sent over, but she’s at least as stubborn as the lock itself, if not more so, and she wants to get it.

Rey lowers her hand, leans in, and peers into the keyhole to see if something is stuck in it.

Through the keyhole, she sees the room. There is a bare window with a transom of stained glass above it, a desk, a sliver of the wall. A carpet on the floor. Thick, heavy curtains, opened, brocaded. The room is more fully furnished than any other room in this house. It is covered in dust. It is empty.

Rey’s throat goes tight.

She should sit back. She should look away. She should keep trying to pick the lock. But her gaze is fixed on the narrow view of the room, all her muscles tight.

Her heart is not pounding. Instead, she’s not sure it’s beating.

This empty room, the leather plush chair, the dusty dark wood desk, fills her stomach with a sense of dread so heavy she cannot move.

Behind her, something thuds. Rey gasps and flinches away from the door, turning and rising to her feet.

The only thing behind her is the stairwell. Her chest is tight, breath held, as she takes a slow step closer. She peers down the steps.

Nothing is there.

Her gaze flicks up to the window on the landing. She forces herself to breathe and doesn’t let herself glance back at the locked door before hurrying down the stairs.

Walking through the house, in broad daylight, on her way to the back door makes Rey feel like she’s too close to a live wire. Her deep muscles are jumpy, the back of her neck prickling. The cheerful pop music playing on her speakers in the dining room sounds hollow and far away.

Outside, she walks down to stand beneath the stag-and-dove window.

In the grass lies a dead bird. Its wings are spread, its head turned to one side. It barely looks dead, more like it’s sleeping.

“You poor thing,” Rey whispers. “You must have hit the window.”

The wind kicks up, skirting over the fields and fluttering Rey’s flannel, adding to the goosebumps already raised on her skin. She turns and goes back inside the house.

  
  


——

  
  


When the sun sets on her seventh day at the Organa house, Rey covers the window she’s working on at the table, turns off her music, and shuts off the dining room lights. In the kitchen, she makes herself her standard egg-on-toast for dinner and hurries upstairs to her room.

Since yesterday, she likes being out in the open of the house even less, especially once night falls. Climbing the stairs feels safe, somehow—the stag-and-dove window, for all the poor bird’s fate yesterday, is a friendly, warm sight even in the dark. But once she hits the upper hall, that locked door in front of her reawakens the cold dread that seeps through her blood.

Rey turns left, hurries down the hall, and locks herself in her room.

She has hung blankets over the two huge windows in her corner room so she doesn’t have to look out into the blankness of the night, her mind trying to anticipate what she might see. She sits on the bed, eats her dinner, tries to relax.

In the distance, she hears something slam.

Her shoulders tense. Her heart beats faster. She swings her feet to the floor and stands silently, feeling like she’s moving in slow motion.

Her fingers are stiff as she closes them around the pocket knife on her bedside table.

A second slam sounds as she creeps across the room. It sounds far away, but as she reaches for the doorknob, she hears a closer sound.

Light, shuffling footsteps in the hall.

With her heart beating in her fingertips, Rey opens the door.

The hallway is as empty as always in the dim light spilling out from her room. Nothing there but dust and the shadows of half-open doors. Eyes wide and pace wary, Rey stalks down the hallway, peering carefully into the rooms. She sees nobody, but the feeling of being watched only grows.

A third time, something slams downstairs.

Hardly daring to breathe, Rey pads down the stairs in her bare feet, every muscle coiled.

She’s on the last step when a final slam sounds and the front door bursts open.

A man stands in the doorway, silhouetted by the single yellow porch light Rey kept lit. He is tall and broad. He is not the preacher.

Rey waits, her wrist turned to hide the knife. She doesn’t want him to see it until she needs to use it.

“Who the hell are you?”

His voice rumbles like thunder. Rey’s fingers ache from gripping the knife.

“I could ask you the same thing. Breaking into someone else’s home like this.”

“I own this house.”

“Bullshit. You would have a key.”

“I lost it, thanks.”

“And the owner’s on the west coast.”

“Airplanes exist.”

The man steps into the entryway. Rey’s heart jumps when he swings the door shut behind him. He strides closer. Rey fights the instinct to flee. He’s big, but she’s quick. Besides, the only way to run is back up the stairs. She has no intention of getting trapped on the second floor, and besides, she still feels like something in the upper hall is watching her.

As he steps closer, she can make out his face a bit more in the pale moonlight streaming down from the stag-and-dove window. Midnight-dark hair falls over a strong forehead. Dark eyes pierce through her above a long nose, a wide, soft mouth. “Why are you in my house?” His gaze flicks down, then back up. “Without pants?”

Rey is too tense to blush. “I was sleeping. And you still haven’t proved you’re the owner.

He stares at her for a moment. His brow furrows. He reaches into his pocket, and Rey whips her arm forward, knife flashing.

The man lifts his hands. “Relax.” More slowly, he reaches into his pocket again. Rey does not relax. But all he pulls out is a wallet. “Here.” He hands her his driver’s license.

_ Benjamin C. Solo _ , it reads. The owner’s name. The photo is unmistakably him.

Rey hands back the card and lowers her knife.

“Who are you?” he asks. He doesn’t sound angry. He sounds curious.

“I’m Rey.” A pause. He watches her. Waits. “I’m repairing the stained-glass windows. Ms. Holdo arranged it.”

“She could have told me you’d be staying here.”

“You could have told her you’d be back before November.”

“It was sudden.” He turns away from her, walking toward the kitchen. “Go back to sleep, then, I suppose. I won’t bother you.”

“Thanks, Mr. Solo,” she says, sarcasm biting into her tone.

His footsteps stop. From around the corner she hears, low, “Just call me Ben.” Then he goes into the kitchen.

Rey stands on the bottom step. Suddenly she shivers—she’s out in the chilly house, bare-legged and bare-footed. The wind is beginning to make the windows creak, which makes her shiver in a different way. She climbs the stairs, hurrying past the locked room, and goes back into her own room.

She doesn’t hesitate before locking the door.

  
  


——

  
  


In the morning, Ben Solo is nowhere to be seen. When Rey creeps down the hall, she finds the last bedroom on the other end of the hall with turned-down covers and a suitcase open on the bed, but otherwise there’s no trace of him.

All the better, she supposes, and she gets to work.

The house feels larger and emptier than ever. A chilly tension won’t leave her shoulders, and it takes her over an hour to realize she didn’t turn on her music. She pauses long enough to set her current playlist going, then turns back to her work.

Halfway through the first song, the music cuts out.

Rey turns, squinting at the tiny speakers. She goes over to check them but notices the playlist itself has been paused.

“How in the hell?” She turns it back on, goes back to work.

Not ten seconds pass before it cuts out again.

Rey goes straight to the mp3 player this time. Again, it’s paused. She clicks play and watches it. Ten seconds pass. Thirty. The song finishes. Shaking her head, Rey sets it back down and returns to the work table.

Her hands haven’t even touched her tools when the music stops again, three notes into the next song.

Rey turns more slowly this time, staring across the room at the player. Her gaze drifts to the wall behind it, over to the corner, and lingers there. The corner is empty, but Rey feels goosebumps rise along her arms and the back of her neck.

From then on, she works without music.

The tension doesn’t quite leave her all day. Even when she thinks she’s focused on her work, her gaze keeps drifting to that empty corner. When the back door in the mudroom behind the kitchen opens, she nearly jumps out of her skin.

But it’s only Ben Solo.

He comes to stand in the doorway of the dining room, hands in his pockets. Rey glances up, says hello, and keeps working. He just—stands and watches her. Finally Rey looks back up and asks, “Do you need something?”

“It’s interesting,” he says. “Your work.”

“Oh.”

“I’ve never seen anyone work on stained glass.”

Rey isn’t sure what the say to that. “Well,” she tries, “now you have.”

A wry smile quirks the corner of his mouth.

He leaves, and Rey begins to clean up for the day. The light is growing warmer and dimmer, signaling sunset. She needs to set herself up for tomorrow, to wash up, to make something to eat and then get to sleep.

When she goes into the kitchen and turns on the sink, she has to scoot past Ben, who’s at the stove. Whatever he’s cooking smells incredible. Rey feels and hears her stomach growl, but she thinks firmly of her eggs and toast.

“I made too much,” says Ben. Rey glances over her shoulder. His back is to her. “You can have some if you want.”

“Don’t like leftovers?”

He turns his head just enough for her to see the curve of his eyelashes. “I thought you might like more than peanut butter.”

Her cheeks heat at the thought of him seeing her meager provisions. Pride wars with hunger. “What did you make?”

“Nothing much. Stir-fry.”

“I smell beef.”

“You smell correctly.”

Rey washes her hands and dries them. She glances out the window, across the barren fields. “Okay,” she says.

She expects a plate or bowl of her serving handed directly to her. She expects to take it upstairs and lock herself in her room, because night is falling and the house is creaking.

Instead, Ben sets the small breakfast table in the kitchen with two plates and two forks, and he spoons out portions onto each.

Rey only hesitates a moment before she sits down.

She does not, however, wait for him. He may have called it nothing much, but the first bite is so flavorful, especially in contrast to her plain eggs and toast of late, that Rey shivers down to her toes.

“Good?”

A glance up shows her Ben sitting across from her now, one eyebrow quirked.

“Thanks,” she says, not caring that her mouth is full. “This is great.”

He nods, and they fall into silence, and they eat.

Outside, the wind picks up. The windows shudder and somewhere out in the house the floorboards creak. Ben doesn’t flinch, and Rey doesn’t feel quite as tense as usual, here with another human being and a warm meal.

When Rey finishes, she washes her dishes and turns back to the table, where Ben is still eating slowly. “Thank you,” she says, “again.”

“It’s nothing.”

It’s not nothing, she thinks. You shared your food with me, and it was delicious, and I felt safer from whatever feels like it’s lurking in this house.

But all she does is shrug.

When she goes upstairs, the locked door seems to loom more than ever. It’s like a bucket of ice water dumped over the warmth from dinner. She hurries down the hall and locks herself in her room, like always, but at least she goes to sleep with a warm belly.

The new pattern continues over the next several days. Ben Solo is nowhere to be seen during the day, while Rey continues her work. She takes her walks in the afternoon, always wearing a jacket and a hat now as the days grow chillier. The fields grow even browner, and the skies stay cloudy.

Once, she walks farther than usual, and she can see the church. Pastor Hux is outside, in the field behind it, but Rey doesn’t quite feel up to his antiquated hospitality, so she turns back before he can notice her.

In the evenings, Ben returns to the house, always bearing groceries which he cooks into something that smells delicious, focusing on the stove and the cutting board with an intensity usually reserved for much higher-stakes activities, and always he offers her a plate.

“Ms. Holdo is already paying me well,” she half-teases on the second day, sitting down to fish and roasted vegetables fragrant with a butter-herb sauce. “You don’t have to pay me in food, too.”

“I’m not paying you,” says Ben, in that even tone of his. “I like to cook. You clearly like to eat. And this house is better when you’re not alone in its rooms.”

Rey eats a brussel sprout. She’s never had a brussel sprout she liked, but this one is crispy from the oven and rich with butter and thyme. It’s good. She wants to say  _ You’ve noticed that too? _ and  _ Do I sound completely out of my head, or does this place seem—haunted? _ But as the words form on her tongue, a shiver goes down her back despite the warmth of the kitchen.

Some things, she knows, are better left unsaid.

On the third day, when Rey goes to make a lunch of peanut butter sandwich, she finds sourdough bread in the cupboard alongside her nearly-gone loaf of dollar-store bread. Curiously, she checks the refrigerator and finds a stock of lettuce, pickles, condiments and deli meats.

Ben takes nothing with him when he goes out for the day. He isn’t packing a lunch. These are for her.

Behind her, a thump sounds.

Rey turns and goes to the kitchen door, peering outside. She doesn’t see a bird this time. Which she’s glad of, but her brow furrows.

She goes back inside, makes a sandwich, and tries to ignore the creaks in the floorboards that seem to follow her to the porch.

It’s nearly sunny today, and she wants fresh air, so she huddles on the steps in her jacket and hat and eats her sandwich. She’s nearly done when Pastor Hux appears around the hedge.

He approaches her as evenly as before, but with more power behind his stride. When he comes up to the garden square, he stops, hands clasped, but there’s a line between his eyebrows today. “I hear the master of the house has returned.”

“Yes.” Rey doesn’t know why this should make the preacher look like he’s just tasted something deeply bitter.

“I must implore you to come stay at the church,” he says. “It isn’t seemly for you to stay alone in this house with him.”

Rey feels her countenance harden. “I don’t think that’s your decision.”

“I understand you’re a modern woman. And your absence at Sunday sermons suggests you aren’t much for church. I see why you would be resistant. But I assure you this goes beyond my own ideas of propriety.”

“Then maybe you should explain yourself.” Because Rey’s goodwill, albeit at a distance, for the preacher is fading fast.

“I know the man,” says Hux. “And you are not safe with him.”

“I know he’s a large person, but I promise you, preacher, I’m good at taking care of myself. He won’t hurt me.”

“You are not safe with him in this house.” Hux’s voice grows strained. “I would urge you to not even work here, with him back, but I can read you enough to know you truly would refuse that. At least come stay at the church.”

Rey stands. “I appreciate that you only want to help,” she says, “but I’m fine.” She turns towards the door. “Good afternoon, Pastor Hux.” And she goes inside and closes the door before he can reply.

When she comes back out after washing her dish, though, she sees him still standing there, glaring up at the house with a fury she had never anticipated. Her heart beats faster as she stands several feet back from the window, in the shadows, watching him. Finally he turns and leaves.

That afternoon, Rey’s music keeps cutting out again until she gives up and puts away the mp3 player and the speakers. The corner doesn’t draw her gaze this time, but out in the rest of the house, the floors keep creaking, and she swears she hears whispers.

It’s so quiet, though, that surely her ears are just straining to make sense of any tiny sound.

The thought doesn’t make her stomach sink any less with cold dread.

She’s even quieter than usual at dinner, and she feels Ben watching her. Halfway through her plate, she finally asks, “Where do you go all day?”

He looks almost surprised. “To work. That’s why I came back now instead of next month.”

“Oh.” She chases a piece of carrot across her plate. “That makes sense.”

“Where did you think I went?”

“I didn’t. Think about it. Not much.” She furrows her brow. “Do you know the preacher at the church down the road?”

When she looks up at Ben, his face has darkened. “Yes. He hasn’t been bothering you, has he?”

“Not really. He keeps saying I should stay at the church, that it’s not proper for me to—”

“Don’t.”

The intensity in his eyes startles her. “I didn’t plan to.” Ben just stares at her, his dark eyes penetrating. “He seems like a prude, but not all that bad. Relax.”

Relaxing, though, does not seem to be in Ben’s skill set. He cooks with intensity, he walks with a powerful stride, and he stares at her in a way that feels electric. “I know the man. I don’t like the man. You should stay away from him.”

Rey bristles, but half-heartedly. She feels heavy under the weight of his gaze. “I could befriend him if I wanted to, you know. But no, I haven’t been seeking him out. And I already said I don’t want to go stay there.”

“Good.” Ben lowers his gaze, and Rey feels the weight of it lift off her.

“Do you hate him that much?”

“Honestly? Yes.” His head is still lowered, but his eyes flick up towards her, dark and deep. “And also—”

Rey feels very still, waiting for him to finish the sentence. But he doesn’t. He shakes his head and goes back to his dinner.

After a moment, Rey does the same.

That night, in her room, the lights out and her head already on the pillow, Rey hears a sound she’s only heard once before. Even under all her covers, she feels herself go cold, her palms go clammy.

Shuffling footsteps outside her door.

She wants to fling back the covers and throw open the door. But her muscles coil so tightly that she moves stiffly, like a tin soldier, slowly climbing out of bed, slowly creeping to the door, her fingers cold and breath shallow as she touches the doorknob. It sounds like someone is pacing right outside her door.

“Ben?”

But these steps are too soft and light to be his.

Heart in her throat, Rey opens the door.

The hallway is empty, dark even of moonlight. Her eyes can barely make out the shapes of the doors. But surely, magnetically, the line of her gaze trails down the hall and fixes on the locked door.

Slowly, Rey walks down the hall. Her steps are light and careful, her limbs heavy, like moving through deep water. If she’s breathing, she can scarcely tell, she’s so wound tight, shivering with dread.

She stands in front of the door and listens.

Inside the room, a chair scrapes, and Rey’s veins run cold.

As though under a spell, she kneels, lowering her face to the keyhole and peering through it.

All the open doors in the hallway slam shut. 

Rey screams and throws herself away from the door, stumbles, her foot passes the top step of the staircase behind her and gravity tilts and she sees the ceiling as she falls back—

Everything rushes, something yanking hard on her arm, and then she’s standing at the top of the stairs, shivering violently, with both of Ben’s large hands holding her upper arms. He’s saying something to her, but she can’t hear it over the blood roaring in her ears.

She can’t look away from the locked door.

Ben shakes her gently and says her name, his tone urgent. Rey finally looks up at him.

He’s pale as a sheet, his eyes wild, searching her face. “What happened?”

Her tongue feels glued to the roof of her mouth. She swallows hard. She can feel the pulse in his palms, quick and strong, beating against her skin. “Nothing,” she says, her voice barely there. “I thought—nothing.”

She knows he doesn’t believe her. But when she turns to go back to her room, he lets her go, though she feels his gaze burning into her back all the way down the hall until she’s in her room and shuts and locks the door.

  
  


——

  
  


As the days pass, it becomes difficult for Rey to tell how she feels. She loves her work, but the house seems to close in around her, its rooms emptier and fuller at the same time, its sounds making her nerves jump. Her music won’t play anymore, and even when Ben is out all day, she never quite feels alone—but in a way that makes her skin crawl.

When Ben does come home, he cooks them dinner, and they eat together. And that—that is good, and warm, and sharing human connection. But there’s also the unspoken presence of that night in the hall. Whatever made the footsteps and slams the doors seems to stand between them.

So Rey pushes through it by telling him about her work, about her life back home, her collection of houseplants and her one good friend, with whom she left extensive notes on how to take care of her plants while she’s gone. She tells him about the city, her favorite bodega, her favorite of the alley cats behind her shop, how she likes the way the sunrise looks from the windows of a lightrail car.

And somehow it turns into telling him about growing up an orphan, about running away from a group home at age thirteen and making a very illegal living working under the table at a junk shop, learning to pick locks and hot-wire cars.

Ben is slower to tell her about himself. His work comes easily, and what life was like on the west coast. His childhood comes thicker, hesitating, until he tells her that once upon a time the backyard here was full of overflowing gardens, vegetables and berry bushes and flowers, where his mother liked to work when she was at home; and when he was a boy he would crawl under the huge coarse leaves of the zucchinis and watch the pillbugs and worms working through the damp earth because it’s strange and beautiful how so much life can be contained in such a tiny space.

“What happened?” asks Rey. Because she knows Senator Organa hasn’t returned to this old family house in years, and the gardens are gone, and the emptiness here goes beyond the lack of curtains and living-room furniture.

“Things changed,” says Ben. And that’s all.

At night, Rey hears sounds. Creaking floorboards. Footsteps. Doors opening and closing. What she swears are voices arguing behind a closed door halfway down the hall.

But she stays in her bed, her door locked, and burrows under the covers to try to block out the sounds.

Saturday comes, and with its dawning, Ben’s door is still closed. Rey, however, works every day, and so she makes herself some oatmeal and then starts on the next window.

This one comes from the empty library-like room upstairs. The round window with the rose in the center. It’s her second favorite, after the stag-and-rose window in the stairwell, and she works on it almost reverently.

It’s nearly ten-o’-clock by the time Ben wanders downstairs. So far Rey has only seen him in fitted sweaters and pants—aside from that night in the hall, but she can remember nothing from that moment except the terror filling her body and the pulse of his heartbeat in his palms—so as he enters the dining room with a cup of coffee, wearing sweatpants and old-man-ish slippers and a t-shirt, his hair still mussed from sleep, it startles her. Something twinges in her chest, not unpleasantly, as he sleepily sips his coffee. “The rose window,” he says, voice gravelly.

“A lot of the windows have roses,” Rey says.

Ben gestures with his coffee cup. “But we always called that the rose window.”

“I like it.” Rey traces the lines of the leading. “It’s my second-favorite, I think. After the one in the stairwell.”

“With the stag.”

“Yes.”

He’s looking at her intensely again, like he’s trying to see inside her and figure out the answer to a question he hasn’t asked. “Did you have breakfast?”

“I had oatmeal.”

“I’ll make us brunch. I know you can eat again. You eat like a horse.”

Usually, people commenting on her appetite makes Rey irritated. But he says it in such a surprisingly fond way that she finds she doesn’t mind. As Ben goes back towards the kitchen, she finds she actually smiles.

He leaves for a little while to go to the store in town, and when he gets back, Rey takes an early break and insists on helping him cook. Ben grumbles but doesn’t protest, so he makes french toast while Rey cooks bacon, and then they sit together and eat both with sliced pears and a fresh pot of coffee.

“What did you put in this?” Rey asks, taking a huge bite of french toast. “It’s incredible.”

“Secret family recipe,” Ben quips.

“Did you mother make this?”

He’s quiet for a beat too long before answering. “My father.”

Rey knows nothing about his father. She’s never heard anything about him, nor has Ben offered information. Divorce, maybe, or possibly he passed away. She doesn’t pry. “Well, it’s delicious.”

“Thank you.” Another pause. “I’m glad you like it.” He carefully cuts a piece of toast. “You know, that was his favorite, too. My father.”

“French toast?”

“The window in the stairwell. With the stag and the dove.”

“Oh.”

Rey looks up at him, really looks at him. He’s watching her and somehow he looks sad, the soft autumn light falling across his long features. He hasn’t shaved today.

“I like that you’re here,” she says, half-surprising herself. And him, too, judging by how his eyes widen. “This house is… It’s better with someone else here. And you’re a good cook. And I like that you’re nice to worms.”

A startled laugh escapes him. Rey realizes it’s the first time she’s heard him laugh, and it hits her clear and warm in the chest. “Are you a defender of worms?”

“They’re sweet,” she says. “They just want to squirm in the dirt and live their lives. And they make the soil better for growing things.”

“Never in my life have I heard someone call worms sweet.”

Rey smiles. “First time for everything.”

Ben smiles back, and it lights up his whole face.

They linger over coffee, and then when Ben tries to wash all the dishes, Rey insists that since they both cooked, they should both clean up; so he washes and she dries. The air in the house feels the lightest it has since her first days here, and Rey is loathe to let the feeling go. So when they’ve cleaned up, instead of going straight back to work, she suggests a walk.

Ben nods, looking at her again like she’s a puzzle he’s almost figured out.

It’s getting colder and the wind is kicking up today, so after Rey pulls on her hat and jacket, Ben lends her a scarf. It’s soft and, like all his clothes, dark-colored, a warm navy that she ties snugly around her throat. They walk out across the fields rather than along the road, hands jammed in coat pockets to not chap them in the wind.

“Has it always been this empty?”

“No,” Ben says. “There are other houses, and families used to live in them when I was a kid. Or at least use them as summer homes. But everyone left, over time, and some of the houses got torn down, and nobody farms here anymore.”

Out here, away from the house, with the wind clearing out the cobwebs, Rey feels brave enough to ask, “Is the house haunted?”

He doesn’t answer right away. The wind is blowing his long hair across his forehead, and his brow is furrowed, and the line of his shoulders is square and strong. “A lot has happened there,” he finally says. “You can still feel it sometimes.”

Which is as close to a yes as he seems willing to give.

By the time they’re almost back to the house, they’ve started talking about Rey’s work. “I figure I have another week or so to go,” she says. “Depending on a couple of the windows.” And then, her heart beating a bit faster, she says, “I haven’t been able to get into that room at the top of the stairs.”

His silence feels heavy, and Rey wonders if he’s remembering that night like she is, with the doors slamming and her screaming and him saving her from tumbling backwards down the stairs.

“You don’t need to worry about that one,” he says.

“Ms. Holdo said there’s a stained-glass window in every room. I was hired to fix them all. I just need a key for that room.”

“Don’t worry about it,” he says again, his tone flatter. “It’s fine.”

Rey furrows her brow. “Ben, I need to do my job. And I want to. Leaving one room undone is like—I don’t know, stopping your haircut with a third of it still not cut. It’ll drive me crazy.”

“Leave it, Rey.” Now his voice cuts as sharp as the wind. He stands at the door, unlocking it, not looking at her.

“But there’s no reason—”

“ _ Leave it _ .” He whirls around to her, eyes blazing.

Rey presses her mouth into a hard line and glares back at him, blood rushing with more things than she cares to name.

He holds her gaze, hard and burning, for too long. Much too long. Then his gaze falls, flickering over her face, before he turns and opens the door. “Please,” he almost whispers, and he goes inside without waiting for her.

Rey stands stubbornly in the doorway until she hears him go upstairs and close his door.

  
  


——

  
  


When they have dinner that night, neither of them mentions the incident. Ben seems almost apologetic—though he doesn’t apologize, as that would involve recognizing anything had happened, which they aren’t doing—and the conversation is gentle. Rey watches him, notices the tension in his shoulders, the way he won’t hold her gaze for very long.

She’s gotten very good over the years at keeping a firm, hard wall around her heart. It’s protected her and helped her more than she can say. It’s hard to open up that gate; few have been able to figure out the latch.

Ben, she’s realizing, must be as good at picking locks as she used to be, because he seems to be standing in the doorway, gate open.

It feels raw and frightening, an entirely different kind of frightening than the sounds the house makes at night.

She wants to finish her job. She wants to know what’s in that locked room. But she also, now, wants to help him, and to help his home.

So she lies awake in bed until midnight, until she’s quite sure Ben is asleep, and then she steels herself and creeps out into the hallway, silent as a shadow, ignoring the way the walls sigh in the wind.

Approaching the locked room fills her head, her heart, her slowly-moving feet with cold dread. All around her are small, eerie sounds, little scrapings and the brushing of feet not her own; she feels someone’s breath, warm and stale, on the back of her neck. She trembles, and she walks, her gaze glued to the doorknob.

As she draws closer, she hears the voices again, muffled and indistinct, arguing inside the locked room.

Rey kneels at the door and presses a pin into the lock with trembling fingers. The voices continue but she can’t understand them, not with the footsteps behind her and the whispers creeping down the walls. Someone speaks in her ear as she fumbles with the lock, but her brain can’t parse the words. Her breath is thin and shallow, her skin damp with sweat, her heart stuttering, but she keeps working until finally, finally, as the arguing voices swell, she feels the lock give, and she turns the knob, and she swings open the door.

The hall and the room go silent and still. The presence of footsteps, whispers, breath all vanish. Rey is alone, cold, shivering, standing in the doorway to the once-locked room that Ben had forbidden her to enter.

Carefully, she steps over the threshold.

It’s an office. There’s the desk and chair she could see part of through the keyhole, the heavy curtains. A thick rug on the floor is soft and dusty under her bare feet. The walls are lined with floating shelves stacked sideways with books, statuettes and empty vases littering the surfaces. One transom window of stained glass runs above the window behind the desk, geometric greens and yellows and reds. Everything is covered in dust. Everything is still.

Adrenaline still flooding her veins, Rey turns in place, taking it in. This place was locked for a reason. Ben had forbidden her to enter it for a reason. She needs to know why.

Nothing stands out, so she goes to the desk and begins opening drawers. There are file folders filled with crinkling papers, old gum wrappers, an empty ashtray and a box of matches. Pens, pencils, a pair of eyeglasses.

In the top middle drawer, the thin one that slides under the desk’s surface, she finds a leather-bound book.

When she opens it, it’s full of writing.

Ben’s writing. She recognizes his penmanship from the grocery list he wrote and stuck to the fridge with a plain utility magnet.

Not daring to sit, Rey drifts closer to the window, reading as best she can in the dim moonlight.

The entries begin three years ago.

_ March 5th _

_ It’s been two years and Mom & Dad still don’t understand the Order. Fought with them again today. Dad calling it a cult. Mom saying Snoke is using me for our family’s clout. _

_ (Because nobody would ever want me on my own merit, right?) _

_ I’ve spent my entire life tortured by my fears and my anger. Snoke has taught me how to transform them into power—power to change my life, to change others. To make things better. Mom & Dad only ever tried to stifle the anger, stifle the fear. There is power in its transformation, and they still can’t see that. _

Rey furrows her brow, flips through the pages.

_ May 22nd _

_ Initiation to Knight level is tomorrow. I’m terrified. I’m trying to shape the fear. Trying to use it. To find the power in it. I will not be weak. _

_ May 24th _

_ To write the entirety of the initiation here would violate Snoke’s trust, but I have now: _

_ \- faced the darkness within me and called it home _

_ \- faced my teacher in vulnerability and given him my complete trust _

_ \- bled by his hand, to let pain teach me _

_ \- learned the fuel that pain provides _

_ \- been baptized in my own pain and made new _

_ I am of the Knights of Ren of Snoke’s Order, and my name is now Kylo. A new chapter begins now. The old things don’t matter anymore. I can begin again. _

Rey’s chest tightens, her mouth going dry. “What did you do,” she whispers, breath shivering over the pages. Her shaking fingers fly over the edges, flipping further ahead.

_ July 18th _

_ Snoke frightens me, and that’s as it should be. The teacher should be frightening because he should be so far ahead of his pupil as to be beyond the pale. The unfamiliar is always terrifying because we can’t understand it. That doesn’t mean it has nothing to teach us. _

_ My mother still won’t understand that. He frightens her, too, but to her that makes him evil. _

_ My father doesn’t even consider the unfamiliar and unknown. He keeps his head down in what he knows and doesn’t bother to examine the other possibilities. _

_ Both of them limit themselves, but I won’t let them limit me. _

_ I know I’m weak. I understand that now. Part of me hates the pain, hates the lessons, wants to run home and hide under my mother’s arm. It would be so much easier. I would be so much safer. _

_ But Snoke has showed me that I’m meant for more. So I’ll keep facing the pain, and the fear, and the anger. Someday I’ll overcome the weakness. Someday I’ll stop being torn. And then I’ll truly learn how to let these feelings transform me. _

Her knuckles hurt, Rey realizes, with how tightly she’s gripping the diary. She leans back against the window, cold, creeping dread sinking down through every inch of her body as she keeps reading. Entries about transformation, shedding the old skin, becoming something more. About Snoke, this shadow figure, and the things he did to Ben—to “Kylo”—accounts of cleaning and bandaging wounds, of the way blood felt seeping from his chest.

Like a dream, Rey remembers the night Ben saved her from falling down the stairs. For the first time, she can recall more than her fear. He wasn’t wearing a shirt. She remembers that, now. He wasn’t wearing a shirt, and his chest and stomach were criss-crossed with scars.

She leans harder against the window, feeling the cold of the pane against the back of her neck. She feels sick. But she can’t stop reading.

Fights with his parents. Isolating himself from all his old friends. Nobody but the Order understands him. Even within the Order, only Snoke truly does. Snoke, Snoke, Snoke, the name slithers across the page over and over and over.

In the next entry, the writing is spidery, like his hand was shaking as he wrote.

  
  
_ October 8th _

_ Snoke says I’m ready for the next stage. I know what I have to do, but I don’t know if I have the strength to do it. _

_ I’m afraid. _

Rey’s pulse beats quicker, her limbs going colder. She turns the page.

It’s a mess. Handwriting so scrawled she has to read some sentences three times to make them out. Warped spots on the page, like drops of water had fallen all over it, blurring the ink in places.

She already knows she doesn’t want to know what it says. But she reads on anyway. She has to know.

_ October 11th _

_ I tried. I tried. I tried to do what Snoke asked of me, tried to truly seal my place in the Order. But I failed, and now everything is ruined. _

_ I’ll lock up the house, I’ll leave, I’ll let the Order fall apart. I don’t care anymore. _

_ I have to try to write this. I have to look at what I’ve done. _

_ Snoke said: to truly Become, you must cut all the ties that hold you back. The greatest tie, the one you won’t even admit, is to your father. Cut the tie and you will be free. _

_ So I said: I already stopped speaking to him. I don’t see him anymore. I’ve cut the tie. _

_ Snoke said: It’s not enough. Your heart is still tied to him and it makes you weak. Remove him. From your heart. From this world. _

_ I had to kill him. _

Something like numbness washes through Rey’s body. She feels far away from everything, from this diary, this house, herself. She keeps reading because she can’t stop now, even as the sick ball of dread keeps curling in her stomach.

_ I met him at the house and meant to do it. My mother was out. Nobody else was here. I came up to the office and found him and tried. I tried. But my hand wouldn’t move, just clutched the knife at my side while my father looked at me with so much pity. I hated the pity, hated him, but I felt myself standing on a precipice, and I knew that if I plunged, I would die too. Maybe not in body. But in heart, spirit, and my father looked at me and said, what has he done to you. What has Snoke done to you. _

_ The man I was has to die, I said. So that I can become something better. _

_ And my father said, What was wrong with the man you were? _

_ I cried. Told him I was weak. Afraid. Angry. Incapable of controlling myself, of using my faults. Snoke could make me better. Had made me better. _

_ And my father. Always with the wry smiles. Smiled at me. Shook his head. How is this better, he asked. I couldn’t answer. _

_ He left me there. Left, out into the pouring rain and the storm. Said he was going to give me time. Let me decide if I was going to really give up everything. _

_ But he never came back. It was dark, the roads were wet, and he never came back. _

_ But Snoke did. He found me here tonight. I’ve been staying with my mother. Helped her close down the house so she could fly back to the east coast after my father’s funeral. Barely speaking, but I helped. She flew out this afternoon, and tonight Snoke found me, here in this room. _

_ Weak, he called me. Weak like my father. Too much compassion. Too much gentleness behind all the rage. _

_ I punched him in the face. _

_ He’s so strong for someone so thin. He fought back. My left hand is maybe broken, my back is bruised, my nose is full of dried blood. But I still had the knife in here. I grabbed it. _

_ And now he’s dead, too. _

_ October 18th _

_ Ever since that night, there have been strange sounds in the house at night. I keep hearing footsteps in the hall. I keep seeing things out of the corner of my eye. Being in the office feels like I’m going to suffocate. _

_ I’ll lock this room and bury the key. And then I’m leaving. I can’t carry all these ghosts. _

That’s the last entry.

Rey stares at the last word, feels herself trembling. Her eyes are wide and damp.

Something rustles in the corner and she jerks her head up. Nothing is there.

In the hall, a floorboard creaks.

Rey cannot see anyone or anything else in the room, but she feels eyes on her, heavy and suffocating. She’s being watched and her head is swimming with what she’s read and she drops the diary and runs out, banging the door as she goes, stumbling down the stairs, through the dark house, and out the back door.

She doesn’t know where she’s going as she bursts out into the dark field behind the Organa house. The sky is a wheeling dark bowl above her, scattered with clouds and stars. The wind cuts through her, chilling her to the bone. She can’t go far, she quickly realizes; she’s only in her sleep shirt, her feet bare. But she stutters across the almost-frosted grass anyway, toes going numb, teeth chattering, head swimming, heart thundering.

The wind is in her ears, so she doesn’t realize Ben has followed her until he’s right behind her, calling her name.

She turns. The panic edged in his voice is written on his face.

“What’s wrong?” he asks, eyes wide and dark and wild in the night.

“I read it,” she says. It feels like the words scrape out of her throat.

And maybe her face shows it, or maybe he saw the office door hanging open, because he doesn’t ask what. Instead his expression crumples. “Come back inside,” he says. “You’ll freeze to death.”

“Is it all true?” Her teeth are chattering, but she gets out the words.

Ben stares at her, nostrils flaring and chest heaving with heavy breaths.

“Is it?” she asks. “Kylo?”

“Don’t call me that.” His voice is more cutting than the wind. “That’s not who I am anymore.”

“So it’s true.” Rey blinks hard. Her eyes are the only part of her that’s not cold; they’re hot and damp. “You were in some—cult—”

“Not anymore.” He shakes his head. “Rey, not anymore. Not for a long time now. I got out.”

Her breath comes shakily, and not only from shivering in the cold. “Not everyone made it out alive.”

“No.”

“Do you regret it?”

“Every day.”

She stares hard at him, at the anguish so clear on his face; she feels the rawness in his voice. “Did you ever confess?”

Ben’s eyes darken, and he speaks so softly now she almost doesn’t hear him. “No.”

Rey just stares at him. When her cheeks warm, she realizes she’s crying.

He begins to reach toward her, then flinches his arm back to his side. There’s pain in the crease of his brow. “My mother doesn’t blame me,” he says. “For what happened to my father.” He swallows. “But I do.”

“It wasn’t your fault,” says Rey. Her voice sounds hoarse, and her teeth chatter.

Again, Ben looks like he’s about to reach out to her as she shivers, but again he stops himself. “Maybe. Maybe not. But Snoke was. All of it.” His mouth trembles. “My mother—she and I started speaking again a few months ago, when she decided she wanted to pass the house into my name. We... are slowly repairing. But she doesn’t know I killed Snoke.”

After a long moment, his dark hair tangling across his forehead in the wind, Ben asks, “Will you leave, now?”

And she thinks. About coming back from a bad place. About doing things you aren’t proud of. She remembers hot-wired cars, stolen wallets, anything it took to survive; she remembers a man lying in an alley, after he tried to hurt her, really really hurt her, and she was only fourteen, and she punched him in the throat and he didn’t get back up and she didn’t stay long enough to find out if he ever did.

She thinks about ghosts, and she sees how haunted Ben’s eyes are.

“Well,” she says, “I still have a job to do.”

His expression softens. “Please come inside. You’ll freeze.”

Rey nods. He turns, and his hand finds the small of her back, and even in the cold of the night, her blood warms. They walk together back to the house.

They close the door to the office. Rey puts on warm socks and sweatpants. Ben makes coffee. And they sit in the kitchen, its warm overhead light and their hot coffee their only shields against the wind outside, the darkness of the night, the sounds that don’t cease in the empty rooms of the house.

  
  


——

  
  


They may have closed to the door to the office, but things still get worse. During the next day, Rey tries to work, but she’s tired and aching from lack of sleep, and she keeps seeing shadowy shapes in the corners of her eyes. She tries to write it off as exhaustion, but the dread that keeps seeping through her veins suggests otherwise.

When she and Ben eat dinner, it’s with tense shoulders. There are banging sounds in the dining room on the other side of the wall. They both know it’s not a loose shutter in the wind.

Ben has shadows under his eyes. Rey imagines she does, too.

When it’s time to go to bed, they pause at the top of the stairs, in front of the closed office door. “Goodnight,” Ben says, and his voice is low.

Rey nods.

They both linger. Both afraid, she thinks, to be alone, now with the scraping sounds traveling along the walls. But finally she uproots her feet and turns, goes down the hall to her room.

She glances back just in time to see Ben’s door closing. Behind it at the end of the hall is a thin figure.

Rey loses her breath. Before she can catch it and scream, she blinks, and the figure is gone.

She goes into her room and locks the door and hopes Ben did the same, even though she doesn’t know if it’ll make a difference.

The increased activity continues the next few days. Ben seems hesitant to go to work, but Rey insists.

“I don’t want anything to happen to you,” he says. They’re standing by the front door, his coat over his arm, and his voice is low and his gaze piercing. “It’s my fault these things are happening. If you’re hurt—”

“I won’t be.” She smiles at him. “Go to work. I’ll be fine.”

He stares at her a few moments too long. But then he nods, puts on his coat, and goes.

And she is fine, in the sense that no physical harm befalls her. But all day Rey feels like she’s being watched. All day she hears wind creaking the windows even though the day is calm and clear. All day her pulse is too quick, her breath too shallow, her eyes straining in anticipation as she goes from room to room.

The only place, she finds, that feels safe is the landing of the stairwell, right underneath the stag-and-rose window. Everywhere else carries an edge of panic, an air of dread.

When Ben comes home, Rey sees tension in his forehead and shoulders that eases the moment he sees her. He cooks dinner, and they eat together as always, even though the empty pan falls off the stove and clangs on the floor, making them both nearly jump out of their skin, even though nobody was anywhere near it and it was securely set in place.

They pause on the landing as they head upstairs for the night. “Can you feel that?” Rey asks.

Ben nods. The side of his hand is brushing against hers, and she’s very, very aware of it. “It’s safer here.”

Glancing up the stairs, Rey sees the office door. It twinges her chest with fear like always, but she feels like if she stays where she is, it’ll be alright.

But she needs to sleep. Both of them do. Sleep isn’t coming easily these nights, and they need whatever they can get.

So she says goodnight and finishes climbing the stairs. As she steps away, she feels Ben’s thumb rub gently across her palm. It gives her more courage to walk down the hall alone, to block out the footsteps and the whispers she hears outside her door every night.

But tonight is different. Tonight, the presence is not content to shuffle and whisper.

The door directly across the hall from hers creaks open and slams shut. Again. And again. Each slam makes her heart jump in a staccato beat.

She hears a soft laugh at her own door.

The slamming stops, as does the laughter. Everything goes still and silent, and Rey lies in bed, waiting for whatever comes next. But nothing happens except her skin raising goosebumps, her teeth chattering, the feeling of being watched growing. No noises, now, but that feeling, like someone is looming over her, glaring down at her, inches away from her—

She leaps out of bed and flies down the hall before she can think.

Ben’s door is unlocked, and she bursts in, a shaky apology forming on her tongue—and dying the moment she sees him.

Moonlight streams through the window and spills across the bed. The covers are thrown back and Ben’s back is arched, head pressing back into the pillows, face darkening.

“Ben?” Rey’s voice is small.

He stares at the ceiling, eyes wide. Rey realizes he isn’t breathing.

There are harsh red marks like fingers around his throat.

Rey is shaking with fear and then with anger. “Get out,” she rasps, her breath still shallow.

Ben’s fingers spasm, grasping at the sheets.

“ _ Get. Out. _ ” One deep breath down in her belly, and Rey is able to raise her voice. “Leave him alone. Leave him alone!  _ Leave! LEAVE! _ ”

A rush of cold air slams the door shut behind her. Ben gasps a thin breath, his shoulders collapsing back down onto the bed.

Rey’s chest feels tight as she crosses the room and kneels on the bed next to him. “It’s all right,” she murmurs, heart twisting at the sight and sound of him struggling to find his breath. “You’re all right. He’s gone, for now.”

He places his broad hand over her smaller one on her knee, squeezing her fingers. “Rey,” he croaks.

“I’m here.” She takes his hand in both of hers, stroking the back of it with her thumb. “I’ve got you.”

They sit in silence until Ben can breathe properly again. Bruises are blooming on his neck. Rey hates to look at them.

He stays lying down, though, and his eyes are still fearful even when he catches his breath. “Would you…” He swallows, then winces.

“I’ll stay,” she says softly, and the tension dissipates from his face. “I don’t want to be alone right now, either.”

Carefully, she climbs under the covers and lies down. They aren’t touching, but when Rey rolls onto her side, she sees Ben facing her. Their eyes meet in the darkness.

“You’re not alone,” he whispers.

Rey feels her muscles relaxing for the first time in days. “Neither are you.”

She sleeps more deeply and soundly than she has in nearly a week. When she startles wake again, it’s still dark, but she can tell she was sleeping for a while.

Ben is awake now, too, eyes wide in the dark. It takes Rey a moment to realize that what woke her was the sound of a door slamming in the hall.

The floorboards creak outside the room. Something thumps against the wall.

Rey’s fingers clench at what they’re holding, and she realizes it’s Ben’s hand. In between them on the sheets, their hands are clasped. They found each other in their sleep. Like an anchor.

She licks her lips and meets his gaze. “We have to do something.”

“We should leave.” He’s so still, so soft-looking. “It isn’t safe here anymore.”

“No.” Rey shakes her head. “This is your home. It doesn’t belong to him.” She closes her eyes, thinks. “We could try an exorcism.”

A soft snort. “I don’t think I’d be very effective.”

“Not you.” Another bang sounds against the wall, and her eyes fly open. “The preacher. From down at the church. He could help.”

“No.”

“I know he’s a bit creepy, Ben, and you don’t like him, but if he can help—”

“He can’t.” Ben’s eyes darken, his brow furrowing. “Rey, he—”

Another bang cuts him off, but this one is worse, louder, like a body slamming against the door itself; it rattles in its frame and Rey yelps and curls in on herself. Ben throws his arm over her shoulders, hand covering her head. They lie there, both breathing shallow and shaking; but the door didn’t open, and after a long moment when nothing else happens, Rey slowly lifts her head.

Ben is watching her, eyes wide and lips parted, like he surprised himself. Rey supposes she surprised herself too. She’s nearly curled against his chest, one of his arms around her. Between them, their knuckles are white as they grip each other’s hands.

She watches him swallow, his bruised throat bobbing. He’s so very still. Like she’s a bird he’ll scare away if he moves.

So she closes her eyes and nestles into the blankets, her forehead leaning against his chest, their hands held between their breastbones. She brings up her other hand to cover his, holding his trembling hand between both of hers.

His chest falls and his breath ruffles her hair as he lets out an enormous sigh. His arm around her settles, gentle and strong at her shoulders, his hand tenderly cradling her head.

They don’t speak anymore. With his chin resting on top of her head and his heart beating against the back of her hand, Rey eventually falls back asleep.

  
  


——

  
  


The morning light no longer chases away the fears of the night like it used to. When Rey blinks open her eyes, the room feels vulnerable, so bare in the daylight. Her shoulders immediately tense, pulse immediately quickens, her body and mind already anticipating whatever might happen.

But she is warm. Ben’s cheek is resting against her head, and in her sleep she has wound one arm around his broad side. His chest is warm against her face.

“Ben,” she says, softly, moving her hand up to gently shake his shoulder.

He breathes in sharply and opens his eyes, looking dazed. “What’s wrong?”

His voice is thick with sleep, gaze unfocused, hair mussed. Rey suppresses the urge to reach up and comb his hair back with her fingers. “It’s morning. You have work.”

During the night, his arm has moved down to her waist, and it tightens around her now. “I’m not going. Not leaving you alone here.”

“I’ll be alright.”

“After last night, I don’t think either of us will be.”

Rey’s mind races. She decided something last night, in the stillness as she drifted off for the second time. And she needs Ben to leave for it to work.

“What if I leave, too?” He opens his mouth, perhaps to protest, so Rey keeps going. “I’ll take my car and go into town for the day. Meet you back here tonight. Would that be okay?”

The shadow of a smile tugs the corner of Ben’s mouth. “I could really use a day off work.”

“I can imagine. But this isn’t exactly the most relaxing place to be right now.”

He nods. “All right. If you leave, too, then I’ll go.”

“Okay.”

They get up and open the door carefully, but the hall is empty. The air feels heavy, watchful, but nothing bangs or thuds or scrapes or whispers as they make their way downstairs, make coffee, make breakfast. The air still hums, though, with tension, with the anticipation of not knowing when the next strike will fall.

Ben wears a turtleneck sweater to hide his bruises. Rey borrows his scarf again and bundles up warmly. Ben locks the doors, and they both drive out from the house, down the old country road.

When they pass through the town, Rey waves to Ben in his rearview mirror and pulls off into the parking lot of a coffee shop. She doesn’t get out of the car; she waits until his car passes out of view, down around a corner and heading for the nearest highway onramp, before she backs out, turns around, and heads back towards the Organa house.

Snoke ruined Ben’s world in life. She won’t let him, in death, take what little Ben has left.

Through the barren fields, out into the emptiness, Rey drives, and she doesn’t stop until she reaches the crumbling old church.

Pastor Hux is outside, kneeling in front of the scraggly bushes that flank the front steps, shoveling mulch over their roots with a spade. He looks up at Rey when she slams the car door and walks up to him, hands in her pockets.

“I need your help,” she says.

The preacher nods.

When they reach the house, Hux stands on the porch, looking up at the house’s facade. “There’s a very strong presence here,” he says gravely. “You were right to let me know.”

“Can you make it right?”

The wind cuts across the lawn, barely broken by the hedges. It tugs at Rey’s hair, the corners of her jacket; it whips Ben’s scarf around her throat. Hux is paler than ever, nose pinkened by the cold, eyes steely.

“I can,” he says. “I advise you to wait here.”

He goes inside, and Rey sits down on the steps, wrapping her arms around herself against the wind and trying to calm her pounding heart.

After a few minutes, she gets up, pacing around the drive. Sitting with her back to the house makes her nervous. Even on the porch, she can feel something watching her.

She walks in a circle around the little garden, her chin and nose tucked down inside Ben’s scarf. It smells like him, his soap or cologne or something. She remembers the smell from his pillows. It grounds her, now, waiting for Hux to exorcise the house.

Distantly, she hears tires crunch on gravel. Furrowing her brow, she turns to see who the hell could be driving up to the house.

Her heart leaps into her throat. It’s Ben.

He pulls up into the drive, parks, and climbs out of the car. “What are you doing here?”

“What are  _ you  _ doing here?”

“I forgot my security badge for work, and I also asked you first.” He strides over to her. “Are you all right?”

“I’m fine.” Rey bites her lip, glances away. “I got the preacher. He’s doing the exorcism.”

She expects Ben to be angry, to list all the reasons he doesn’t like Hux, to be annoyed that she lied. None of that happens. Instead he goes white as a sheet.

“Rey,” he says. “Hux was part of Snoke’s cult, too.”

Slowly his words wash over her, pouring cold dread through her chest, her stomach, every inch of her. Her lips part, eyes widen, but she doesn’t know what to say.

Together, they turn and look up at the house.

Smoke is beginning to billow from the office window.

“No.” Ben whirls to her, eyes wild. “Stay here.” He sprints towards the house.

“Like hell,” Rey growls, and she runs after him.

The moment she passes the threshold, she jolts. It’s colder in the house than it is outside. Something grabs at the hem of her jacket. She pushes forward, follows Ben up the stairs. When they cross the landing, for a moment it feels warmer and the tugging feeling stops, but as they run up to the office, someone laughs cruelly in her ear.

The upper floor is filling with smoke. Through the office doorway, she can see orange flames licking up the curtains, consuming the desk and chair. Rey coughs, pulling the scarf up over her nose and mouth. Ben rolls up the neck of his sweater. “Where is he?” Rey asks, squinting.

“I don’t know. Quick, in the closet—”

Rey flings open the closet on her side of the hall. There’s a fire extinguisher on the floor; she hauls it out and hands it to Ben. He aims it into the office, but nothing happens.

“Expired,” he snarls, “damn it—”

“Ben.” Rey grabs his arm. Her eyes are watering, her throat raw, her lungs aching. “We don’t have time.”

“I have to try—”

“Move!” She pulls him and they stumble down the stairs as flames spill into the doorway and begin creeping across the hall’s runner.

The light of the fire dances in his dark eyes. “It’s beyond us now,” Rey says, imploring. “Come  _ on _ .”

There are tears in his eyes when he takes her hand and runs with her down the stairs and out of the house, the fire cascading down the staircase behind them and the cruel laughter chasing them.

The air outside is cold and cutting, but it’s clean in their lungs. They cough and cling to each other, staggering away from the house and out into the yard. Smoke is pouring from all the upper windows now, and Rey can see flames flickering inside the open front door and beginning to dance along the front wall.

Ben is breathing hard, and Rey feels the first spark of anxiety that he inhaled too much smoke, until she realizes he’s weeping. Shaking hands scrub at his eyes. His shoulders hunch like he wants to curl in on himself and disappear.

It twists her heart to see.

Stepping in close to him, Rey wraps her arms around him. He bends his head down to her shoulder, and when his knees buckle, she lets him sink to the ground. On her knees, she cradles his head against her chest, stroking his hair. “It’s all right now,” she murmurs as his arms wind around her. “You’re free now.”

She presses a kiss to his head, and he melts against her, fingers pressing into her back. Letting her lips linger against his hair, Rey holds him, and the house burns.

  
  


——

  
  


Eventually all that’s left of the Organa house are smoldering ruins. When even that has cooled enough not to heat the air around it, Rey and Ben walk together into the remnants, holding hands.

Everything is gone. The beautiful antique furniture. The table where they shared their meals. The stairway. Rey’s tools. The gorgeous stained-glass windows, all shattered and warped beyond repair.

But the presence is gone, too. The air feels clear, clean, smoky still but not heavy with watchfulness. Rey turns in a circle, drawing Ben with her, but from nowhere does she feel dread and terror.

Whatever Snoke left behind in the house, it burned with the fire.

She looks up at Ben. He’s already gazing at her, his face soft.

“What will you do now?” asks Rey.

He lifts his hand and touches her cheek, strokes his fingers back into her hair to tuck it behind her ear. A warm shiver runs through her at his touch. “I’ll start over,” he says, his voice low.

“Here?”

“No. Somewhere new.” Ben turns, looking out across the fields. “I’ll build a new house, I think. Something smaller. Something free of ghosts.”

The clouds move across the sky, parting to reveal the sun. Its weak rays glint against something in the charred ruins; Rey tugs Ben’s hand, leading him over.

Lying underneath the burned remnants of the staircase is the stag-and-dove window. Every piece is still intact.

Rey looks up at Ben. His brow furrows softly. He lets go of her hand to crouch and reach out, running his fingers over the colored glass.

“You could bring it with you,” Rey says. “It was the only safe place.”

“I don’t know what I would do with it.”

“I could fit it,” she says. “I could install it. In the new house.”

He stands and looks at her with an intensity that lights up something in her core. “You would do that for me?”

Rey smiles. “Don’t ask stupid questions,” she chides, taking both his hands in hers. He smiles back and lowers his head, resting his forehead against hers.

The clouds don’t cover the sun again. Its light follows them, glinting off the window as they carry it to the cars. It shines down on them as they drive away, in their separate cars but traveling to the same destination. It washes over the remains of the Organa house, where no cold laughter lingers and finally everything is still.

**Author's Note:**

> P.S. Don't be afraid to come say hi on [Twitter](https://twitter.com/nuanceismyjam), [Pillowfort](https://www.pillowfort.io/nuanceismyjam), or [Tumblr](http://nuanceismyjam.tumblr.com/)! (Which I use in that order, in terms of frequency.)


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